


Misery Loves

by brightblackbird



Category: Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou | Kare Kano
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Canonical Rape/Non-con, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 22:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4539435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightblackbird/pseuds/brightblackbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well? Don't you feel bad for me?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misery Loves

Ryouko knows she is meant for better things than this.

She has one memory of her real father—sitting up late at the window to catch him coming home, snowflakes already melting on his jacket as he catches her and swings her up, drunk and unsteady on his feet but humming cheerfully off-key to himself as he carries her upstairs. The smell of cheap alcohol will bring it back sometimes in her adult life, but it never lasts very long.

_His_ smell permeates the house now, overpowering and sour, and perhaps something only she can smell. Sometimes it catches her by the throat and chokes her even when he is not home.

 

* * *

 

She slips the first bottle of perfume into her purse from a display shelf in a mid-scale department store. It's flashy and loud and cheap, but it masks the sour odor. She escapes _him_ for a week by wearing it, and finally he gives her a bruise across her thigh and she keeps the bottle under her bed after that, putting it on only when she can be sure of an afternoon out alone.

She walks taller wearing it, and the first boy she catches has the money for a more expensive scent. He throws out her old bottle and tells her to buy something classier. He confesses to her while drunk that he prefers the cheaper scent, and she continues to buy both. She's not going to be with him long.

She uses the money he gives her to buy a low-cut dress that hooks her Masao. She has no definite plans for Masao, but by some instinct gives him a false surname and says she is a young-looking 18.

She coaxes train fare out of him and sees him only in the neighboring town where he attends college. He owns a nice car and they go driving with the hood down on roads by the ocean that smell of saltwater and clean air. She meets his friends and charms them, and when he tells her, head bowed in embarrassment, that his grades have dropped and his parents have cut his allowance, she smiles and tells him it doesn't matter. For 8 hours she believes she is telling the truth.

She's stayed too long to get home before dark, and he urges her to stay the night, all innocence. He offers her his futon and rolls out a smaller one for himself like a true gentleman, and at 4 in the morning she wakes, lies in the darkness for twenty minutes looking up at a ceiling she cannot see, and then slips out quietly.

This is not the last time she will leave men in the night, but this first time, in her innocence, she takes only the train fare he left by the door for morning. She does not think to bring with her the gifts she has left in his apartment to avoid suspicion at home. She will not make this mistake again.

Shortly afterward she changes her perfume. The new one smells of flowers and reminds her of gardens far inland, behind huge houses where servants halt their gossip as they see the lady of the house gliding into view.

Arima Reiji has found a light in the darkness that surrounds him. He is a means to the life she wants, but beyond that what she wants is to tie herself to him with the bastard child that will ruin him. She wants the money, and then she will cut him off and watch him drown. He is miserable and yet he looks at her with pity—and why _should_ he, why should he _dare,_ when she gets everything she wants these days?

 

* * *

 

The money from Reiji is so much less than she'd hoped for, and the boat she's gotten herself into is less and less appealing every day. There's the sunk cost to consider, of course, but as ever when she changes scents she feels restless and in need of change. She's older than she was, but she still gets looks—she has a mature, confident look now that pulls in a whole new crowd, a new source of attention and clothes and cash. She had thought Reiji to be something like her last shot, in the foolish desperation of adolescence; but there is life after high school after all.

Perhaps it's coming time to cut the anchor.

Her new favorite smells of the ocean. The memories associated with the ocean are no longer painful; it was, after all, her first taste of real glamour. She has the sense to appreciate that now. She doesn't have the money yet to live by the ocean, but she puts it on her wrists every time she leaves the apartment. The apartment smells more stale every day, and the brat has his own scent that seems to be everywhere even when she escapes into another room.

She looks into the brat's face and sees Reiji there unmistakably, and this thing that grew from her, took her flesh as its own, has the audacity to ask more of her.

_He_  was always careful not to give her any marks that were too visible. She might have learned by example, but the brat doesn't leave the house much anyway.

 

* * *

 

_He_ dies when she is 19. Half the neighborhood turns out to mourn him, and she walks into the memorial service knowing that she will once again be met with the sour smell she escaped years ago. The incense is traditional, but she knows in this case it's here to shield the mourners from the stench she has known for years. If he hadn't been cremated they might have stood his corpse up in a box like a foreign funeral and he would have smelled no worse than he did in life.

She sweeps in dressed in black—tacky black, but tasteful enough not to draw the attention immediately. The skirt is a reasonable length, and the slit up the side takes a few moments to notice. And she makes sure their eyes are on her for more than a few moments. This bottle was paid for, not stolen, and applied almost too heavily even for her.

She doesn't plan on staying long enough to risk being kicked out. She simply passes through the crowd, the scent of her perfume lingering behind her, enough for his ghost to choke on it if he's come to bask in the affection of his mourners. She makes her way to the incense and pauses, letting her scent drown it out as she opens her compact and absently checks her makeup. Still just a bit too thick to be in good taste. Perfect.

Her mother is dead several years. She skipped that service and has never visited the grave, though she has a vague memory of where the family plot is located. Instead the chief mourner is another older woman, probably his sister, and Ryouko wonders if there is perhaps a niece in attendance, celebrating secretly behind folded hands. Or perhaps the blood relation would have spared her his attentions.

She dismisses the thought. If any such girl is here, she's a fool for coming and a fool for not leaving home long ago. His household is no concern of Ryouko's anymore. All she needs to know is that the sister loved her brother, that much is clear from the frown spreading across her face, and that's more than enough reason to ruin her day.

Nearly everyone's attention is on her now. Their disapproval is clear, but no one quite wants to be the first to make a scene at a funeral. God bless the suburban sense of propriety. Where would she be without it? She might actually be _proper_.

She pops her lipstick once more, closes the compact, and makes for the door at a pace not quite fast enough to be an escape. She's heard—and knows firsthand, too—that scent is associated powerfully with memory, and when they remember his funeral they will think of the saccharine sweet aroma that he hated so much. Still it's an empty, pitiful gesture and she knows it. The smell will dissipate soon enough in the open air, and her face will fade from their memories, leaving only the vague recollection of a special day ruined.

But her good mood lasts long enough for her to buy an extra ice cream to take home for the brat. She hasn't seen him in a few days; she left for the service straight from a department store dressing room. She finishes hers on the way home, and his is half gone by the time it reaches him. He's delighted anyway by what remains, and she watches him dig into it hungrily with the over-sized wooden spoon they gave her.

A bruise is healing to a faded yellow on his forehead—was that her, or a fall?—and for a few minutes there is silence in the still, stuffy room as the sun sets. The boy casts a long shadow, and when it is nearly man-sized she retreats from it, frightened for once instead of angry.

Even from the next room Ryouko can see that darkness growing, its flat head turned to gaze out the window, and if ever it gets up off the floor she knows, furiously and helplessly, that it will be able to step outside into a world where she cannot follow.


End file.
